Contraption Maker

We're Growing Up. Contraption Maker Hits Beta!

Another month, another update, but this one is more special than others. As of today, we are no longer in Alpha and have grown up to Beta! This means that pretty much all of our base systems are in the game, everything is much more stable, and we have way more puzzles for people to play. This also means that our 1.0 release is coming up fast! Because we have moved up from Alpha, we have bumped the price of the game up from $9.99 to $14.99. However, the game is now a TWO-PACK. That means that everyone that purchases the game now gets a gift copy of the game along with it to send to a friend. Give the extra copy to someone you like, try out the multiplayer, and build something together!

New Puzzles

If you have been looking for new puzzles, you are in luck. We have almost doubled our current amount of puzzles, adding 45 new ones! This brings the total official puzzle count up to 100. If you feel like you solved a puzzle in a strange or exploitative way, submit your solution to this forum thread. Some solutions are clever and will stay in, but certain solutions that break a puzzle are helpful to know about.

New Parts

Aidan's Cooler: This is similar to the other boxes, but it’s much easier to move around. It’s on wheels, and has a handle that you can attach a rope to.

“Ratchet Clicker”: Hit the button or give the rope hook a pull to give an impulse (he likes it!) to the hamster and make him run for just one rotation. Official name TBD.

Part Creator: Set which part you want to make and how often you want it to be made. Once the part creator is turned on, it will continue to produce the selected part until it’s turned off.

Vertical & horizontal walls & pipe: These are special versions of the walls and big pipe that can only be stretched vertically & horizontally. Use these as puzzle parts to make your puzzles less exploitable. (Icons in part tray are temporary)

Limited length Conveyor Belt: Conveyor belts are fun, but it can be hard to put them in a puzzle because they can be too powerful. This is a special conveyor belt for use in puzzles. It can only stretch a certain distance, it can’t be stretched diagonally, and it only has one pulley attachment.

Stone Tablet: These are like dominoes, but they are slightly heavier.

New UI & Usability Fixes

In addition to part 2 of the UI overhaul, a bunch of usability fixes have been implemented to make your play experience much more enjoyable.

Usability

You can now play levels directly from the community instead of subscribing and then going to the stash. This makes the community playing process much smoother and easier to understand.

Customizable keyboard bindings: A long awaited feature. Go into the settings to check out or set your own keyboard shortcuts.

Official puzzle solutions: After solving a puzzle (official or community), you can check out how the creator of the puzzle solved it.

Freely rotatable parts now have buttons and widgets rotate along with them. This means buttons will no longer end up on top of the rotate handle.

The puzzle boundary (the black line around your puzzle) is now used for creating the screenshot for your puzzle or contraption in the workshop. When publishing a contraption or a puzzle, you will get a confirmation window to make sure everything looks right.

Animated arrows now connect frames of animation to give you an idea of the speed.

You can now click the speed bar dots to change contraption playback speed.

Parts can be cloned in test mode if there are some still in the tray

Moved record button out of simulation controls to avoid accidental recordings

Puzzle boundary can be moved

When publishing a puzzle, there is now a check to see that it is actually solvable.

Certain parts can now have their states edited when they are used as puzzle pieces: Egg timer, Dripping bucket, Toaster, Ray gun.

Made Belt Attachment highlight red when they are out of range

Downloaded levels can be displayed in the community browser

Buttons that can't be adjusted when a part is locked will now disappear when that part is locked

UI

New part selection

New workshop card graphics

New tooltips throughout the game. These can be turned off in the settings when you no longer need them.

New handles for walls that behave differently

New multiplayer server browser

New animation window

New puzzle goal editor

New state window

Infinite background grid. The puzzle boundary in make mode is now just a line.

New Music

6 new songs have been added to use as background music for your puzzles and contraptions.

New Art

New art has been made for the following parts. Some parts still have super pretty programmer art, but the list of these parts is getting pretty short.

The big gold pipes now have different shading for each corner piece. This means all of the shadows on the pipes will now match up.

Added new Wrecking Ball art. This has slightly changed the size and shape of the wrecking ball. Contraptions that used the old wrecking ball may need some adjustment

Added new artwork for Thread Bobber

Brick and caution walls have been changed to fit in more with the overall art style.

The fight animation between Waldo and Milton now fades out

Part & Physics Changes

As always, these changes can make your current contraptions run differently. Give them a check and see if they are still running like you want them to. We are very close to locking these things down, which means no more breaking contraptions!

Made Blimp and Paper Lantern be light and heat sources when going down in flames (Art for this coming soon)

Toolman Tim will now walk when hit by low mass parts

Explosions will now blow up Blimp when it is within range of the explosion

Gave the Flying Saucer a lot more mass so it can carry other parts

Adjusted rope slack for the Light Bulb, Ratchet Clicker, Ray Gun, and Trapdoor so they aren't immediately triggered when hooked to parts that only drop very small amount before coming to rest

Added some friction damping to the Trapdoor platform so it won't swing forever after dropping

Fixed pivot location on the Trapdoor

Bucket should no longer turn on light when not moving

Toolman Tim will go back to running after fall if he was running before fall

Fixed Punching Fist so it can only be triggered when button shape was hit

Made Lasers and Energy Bursts light fuses

Allow part states to be edited in play mode

Scenery groups can be right-click cloned.

Made Pinball Flipper work like a real flipper (still tweaking values)

Made Wood Crate less bouncy

Adjusted friction of Egg -- it will not roll down angled walls/inclines more correctly instead of sliding

Heavy parts will no longer tunnel through buckets

Bug Fixes

In addition to everything here, we have our usual long list of assorted bug fixes for the game. You can check out the official forum post HERE to see the complete list.